"What are you doing?" she asks the little one in the backseat.
"Driving the van," he claims, his hands balled into fists circling the imaginary steering wheel, "what are YOU doing?"
"Trying to figure out where I misplaced my eighteen-year-old thighs..." she mutters, popping another onion ring into her mouth, "but these aren't helping."
The little one bursts into laughter and says, through the forced giggles, "I have no idea what you mean."
The mini-Socrates, a.k.a. the older one in the backseat says "I know exactly what she means. She wishes she was younger. But Mom," he continues, "did you have us when you were eighteen? Because I don't think you did. And that's why you don't have your eighteen-year-old body anymore, too."
She agrees with him and slurps another drink of Diet Pepsi. The older one looks pensive. "This music," he says, shaking his head with distaste.
She glances at the display on the dash; the words "heart, heart" thump from the speakers, and she tries to think of the word that describes the figure of speech Ingrid Michaelson used with the lyrics of this song, called Ghost. She looks up at him in the rear view mirror as he continues, "This stuff is all weird. All lovey, but all sad, sort of. Are you sad or do you just like the music? Are you in love? That's gross. Does this make you think of your grandma? Or when my dad left you?"
She gulps and fumbles for another onion ring. Onomatopoeia? That might be it. This kid knows too much.
"I just like it," she says, "I'm not really sad."
"Lots of things have happened in your life, I guess," the older one says.
"And I have you guys, now, which is the best thing," she says with a wicked grin.
The older one presses his lips together so they disappear, and gives one quick nod of his head before he slips on his headphones and fixes his gaze out the window.
The little one returns to hysterical laughter, as if he knows something else. He clicks his invisible turn signal. "You could play that song that goes 'Boom Boom'!" There, that's onomatopoeia.
She smiles to herself and shifts deeper into her seat, concentrating her eyes on the country road that stretches in front of her.
